Nats Reflections..............

[George Kennie]

Nats Reflections??????????  How much time do you have?
What a week!!!!!
Saw some wonderful flying! Garnered tons of knowledge, especially in the areas
of electric equipment. Jerry Budd was a gold mine of info regarding all aspects
of everything he was asked about and came across as holding nothing back.
Richard Landis gave me a seminar on all the stuff he's picked up technically
regarding his set-up ( and let me tell you his stuff worked well) which was
significantly less costly than all the other rigs( thank you Richard and
Jerry).
I spent part of the mornings calling for Bill Pascucci over on Intermediate and
met lotsa great new people as well as fellowshipping with many old friends from
previous years.
Got to do some of my usual "coaching whether they want it or not" with some of
the top dawgs as the wind was playing havoc on some maneuvers (like the 1/2
Clover).Some of these guys didn't know that there was a specific length to the
inverted portion of this maneuver and others felt that the vertical up and down
lines didn't need to be superimposed on each other.In an unofficial capacity
I'm allowed to assist in execution and presentation coaching and I see my
function as helping in these areas. I'm aware that some guys don't appreciate
me sticking my nose in where it doesn't belong, but thankfully there are some
whose egos allow acceptance and they're grateful for the feedback.
This was my first exposure to Tony Frakowiak who, I have to tell you, is one
awesome executioner. Especially in the known stuff, he was as good as any of
the others, however, there were some areas in the unknowns where he was off
just a smidgeon.
You know who really impressed me? Todd Blose!  Boy, does that guy have
potential! When he would hit a maneuver that he would do well, it would be
TEXTBOOK!!!
In one round, he did the loop with one roll flawlessly. In another round it was
the 1/2 Clover. If he can get to the point where he can put a whole sequence
together he's going to be unstoppable.
Oh yeah, I also got to help Terry Hemmis in Intermediate with inverted rudder
application for which she seemed grateful and when I saw her the next day she
said that she was using it and it was working for her (how great is that,
wow!).
Met Vicente Bortone and his buds from the K.C. area and enjoyed their company
immensely.
Impressive new models were Jerry's Abbra and Quique's Brio. There were a couple
of Abbras ($1300 and 4 evenings and you're in the air), and quite a few
Brios(Piedmont Models).
As to the flying skills displayed,..........there was Quique, and then there
were the humans! As I sat out there, in my chair, many guys approached me with
the "whose winning?" question, which was easily responded to with "Quique,
hands down". You know, last year I scored Quique lower than his final standing,
but he didn't fly this year like he flew last year. He didn't just fly better
than everybody else, there was a significant gap between he and the next lower
competitor. On my score sheet he won all 4 rounds handily except for the first
unknown where I had Don tying him.
Nobody was God in the rollers as everybody was losing centering on the backside
due to the wind billowing out the final roll to the outside and everybody was
also either completing early or late with many changes in roll rate in an
attempt to nurse the thing in one area or another.Some would reverse the roll
direction before completion of the previous roll. It was obvious that it was a
tough maneuver.
You know how I always say that you can't trust your impressions about how you
THINK a guy is flying? Well, last year that happened to me with Sean. This year
it was Don. Every time I scored him I got the feeling that he was a little off,
but when my numbers were added up I found that he did extremely well.
Which brings me to another point of concern regarding the judges picked to
judge the finals. I confess that I don't know how they go about performing that
task, but I think that the judges should be ONLY FAI pilots that didn't make
the cut.The judges should be pilots who have been consistantly flying the FAI
class IMHO as I feel that the underclassmen have not yet had enough exposure to
the extreme discipline of the FAI regimen (nothing personal here guys).We owe
the best the best!
How many of you guys knew that our friend Mr Hyde is flying
Airtronics???......Yep, I'm pretty sure it was a Stylus. Had more than one
airplane too! Had the Genesys and the Scandalous (bi-plane). Both airframes are
products of C.A. Models. I couldn't help wonder if the Scandalous was a second
generation Double Vision and if it was why he didn't call it something like
"Forize", although they are quite dissimilar in appearance.The Scandalous
appears to have a smaller vertical profile with the wings closer together with
high aspect ratios.I thought that the long skinny wings might be difficult to
handle in high winds, but appeared to be of little concern to someone of his
ability. The one flight that I saw him fly the Genesys was awesome and if I had
been scoring it the result would have been very high (as good as any flight I
observed in the contest).However, I found the bipe difficult to score, as
visually I had difficulty staying with it's tracking and orientation. I think
one of the reasons for this phenomenon was that he was up 5th in round
one(finals) and he elected to fly downwind. After watching 4 guys fly the
sequence in the other direction, your eye became accustomed to what the
maneuvers should look like in that direction and the transposition duty that it
placed on the judging effort, plus the fact that the sky, during that flight,
was filled with 5 foot diameter clouds almost touching each other and that
particular background made clear recognition difficult.Interestingly, his
subsequent flights were performed in the established direction and I did find
it easier to deal with the visual thing as time went on, but never felt that he
was best served with that model.
Last nite I spent 4&1/2 hours crunching my numbers(unofficial) and needless to
say, the results I arrived at were significantly different than the official
tally.
Troy's situation is very interesting. As some of you know, Troy had a flame-out
on the 3rd maneuver of the final round and lost that score, but at the end of
the 3rd round I had him in 4th place aaaannd if I average his scores for the
first 3 flights and add that averaged number to his other 3 scores it moves him
into 3rd place according to my numbers, which would have changed things
tremendously.BTW,IMHO Troy was making the most power of any of the IC engines
and that buggar ran flawlessly throughout the contest. There's no good
explanation for the flame-out except YS-Voodoo.
My prediction for the future is that the three IC guys in this years finals
will be utilizing electron propulsion next year.
Georgie

P.S. Anybody interested in my order of finish, just send me an e-mail. You'll
be shocked!!!!!!!!!! Numbers don't lie!

Jason wrote:

> Here are the final placings for F3A:
>
> 1 Somenzini, Quique     Brio/Hacker
> 2 Hyde, Chip                    Scandalous/Hacker
> 3 Szczur, Don           Brio/YS
> 4 Lockhart, Dave                Vivat/Webra
> 5 Blose, Todd           Genesis/Hacker
> 6 Frackowiak, Tony              Partner/Hacker?
> 7 Jesky, Andrew                 Brio/Hacker
> 8 Newman, Troy          Pinnacale?/YS
>
> Jason
> www.jasonshulman.com
>
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